I MADE AN ''ADA INSPIRED'' AQUASCAPE FOR MY FAVOURITE NANO FISH

In this video I'm going to show you guys how I made this beautiful 60 centimeter nature style aquascape inspired by ADA. I'm going to take you guys back to August last year when I just had an empty wall all the way up until today six months later when this tank is fully grown in. Let's get started. When I first moved into my new studio I placed my saltwater aquarium against this wall which looked quite good. There was enough room for something bigger. The space between the two doors is 67 centimeters so perfect for a standard size 60p aquarium. So I moved the saltwater aquarium to a new location and ordered a scapaline 60 from Oase. I already had the scapaline 90 downstairs in the living room and I thought the 60 would fit here really well. You can buy the tank separately or go for this set which comes with a really nice cabinet. And the cabinet already comes pre-assembled so no need to struggle with flat back furniture. The dimension of the scapaline 60 is 60 by 35 by 35 and the cabinet is 80 centimeters high. For the light I'm using the Twinstar E-series 4. This is a really good light but to be honest with you guys the main reason I got it is because of the aesthetics with the acrylic legs. I think it looks really clean. This one has red green blue and orange LEDs which should make the colors of the fish and the plants pop nicely. Before we move on with the rest of the equipment I want to try and hide that light switch so let's add a background. As always I'm using the window film from my local hardware store. Super cheap and relatively easy to apply. First just make sure the glass is really clean. Then cut the window film to the correct size and I like to cut it a little bit bigger and just trim off the excess when I'm done. Then spray the glass with water so the window film doesn't immediately stick. You can still move it around if necessary. After removing the protective layer from the film you can apply it to the glass. Then with a credit card or something similar just squeeze out the excess water. Then trim off the excess foil with a sharp blade and the background is done. It didn't completely hide the light switch but it's good enough. Moving on to the filter. For this setup I decided to go with the Oase Biomaster 600 which in all honesty is way too big for this aquarium but there's no such thing as too much filtration. I'm just gonna have to reduce the flow a little bit. I will show you later how I do that. This is also the new Biomaster version 2 which has a few upgrades to improve the flow. I did replace the standard biomedia with some Seeker Matrix to improve the biological filtration. I'm also not going to use the standard filter tubing because it is very rigid and difficult to work with. Instead I'm using this tubing from Chihiros which is very flexible, almost a bit too flexible. So you have to be careful with corners and make sure it doesn't kink and restrict the flow. Okay now we are ready to start scaping. First thing going in is of course the substrate. I'm starting with a thin layer of aqua soil followed by some root tabs and then more aqua soil. For this size aquarium I would recommend one big 8 or 9 liter bag of soil as well as a small 3 liter bag. I like to take my time to spread out the substrate evenly and I always make sure I have a nice slope towards the back to help increase that sense of depth. For the hardscape I'm using elderly stones and black slim wood. The idea is to create a dense jungle but I do want to have an opening slightly off center. I'm happy with the positioning of the wood so let's add in some rocks. I'm making sure the rocks are either on top of or next to the wood as this will be helpful later when we glue the hardscape together. Here's the final hardscape. Five pieces of wood and seven rocks. Pretty simple but I think it looks great. I'm now going to take the wood out again because I want to wrap it with moss. I've taken a bunch of moss from a UNS45T and I'm using ADA moss cotton to tie it to the branches. This moss cotton will slowly dissolve after about a month when hopefully all the moss has attached itself onto the wood. Okay done wrapping and I've covered the moss with some wet paper towels to prevent it from drying out. Now let's glue the rocks and wood together. Alright all done gluing and the plants just arrived as well. I've ordered a variety of stems for the background, crypts and ferns for the midground and carpeting plants for the foreground. First plant going in is Glossostigma. This is not the easiest carpeting plant but it is one of my favorites. Next up we have Cryptocoryne Green Gecko. This is the first time I've used this one and I love how vibrant green it is. It also doesn't grow too big so perfect for this size aquarium. Then I added two more crypts and they both look very similar but one is Venditia Red and the other one is Cryptundulata. I just can't remember exactly which one I planted where. Of course a nature style aquarium is not complete without some Java ferns and Anubias. Lastly I planted a variety of stems in the background. If you're interested I will leave a full plant list in the video description. That's the planting done so we can now fill the tank up with water. I always like to lay down some paper towels so the water flow doesn't disturb the substrate. In the meantime we can also set up the CO2 system. I'm going to be using the new inline diffusion from Chihiros which goes on the tubing from the Outflow. For the CO2 system itself I have a two kilogram cylinder with a CO2 art regulator. This is actually the first ever high-end CO2 regulator I got almost six years ago now and this thing has never failed me. If you're interested I'll leave a link and a discount code in the video description. So I'm filling the tank up with reverse osmosis water. This is basically pure water with everything else removed. So that means that I do need to add some minerals back in again. It's a little bit more work but since my tap water is quite hard it's worth the extra effort. Here's how the tank was looking two days after planting. I've added one pot of Limnophila sessiliflora as a helping plant. Adding some fast-growing plants to a new setup can really help a stabilizing ecosystem because they soak up a lot of excess nutrients. A few weeks later I went to a fish shop where I saw these beautiful guys. Black tiger darios. I knew these would be the perfect fit for this aquarium so I got four of them and brought them home. Soon after that I also added some sparkling gouramis. I really love these fish and they actually make sounds as well. Here's how the tank was looking five weeks after planting. As you can see the plants have grown really well but there was also some algae. This is completely normal in a new setup and it just means the tank is not really balanced yet. In this case I think the light was a bit too strong as well so I dimmed it down. A few weeks later most of the hair algae was gone and things were looking a lot better already. I just wanted to wait a few more weeks before I would show you guys the end result. Well those few weeks actually turned into a couple months. The last day that you guys saw was from I think end of October 2024 and it is now mid-January 2025 so a long time has passed. Basically this tank really tested me, really tested my patience as well. You know guys I've been aquascaping for many many years now. I'm not exactly sure how long but it's been a long time and I'm pretty good at keeping my tanks algae free and if I do have algae then I know what what caused it and I know how to fix it and it's usually taken care of within a couple of weeks. For this one however I never really managed to get rid of that hair algae. Even now if you look closely at the tank there is still quite a lot of it and honestly I have tried so many different things to get rid of it like less light, more CO2, less fertilizer, more fertilizer but none of those things really seem to work. Actually the only way I've managed to reduce it to this level is by using chemicals. So I've used this stuff Easy Life Algae Exit together with this stuff APT Fix. So this is like Glutathaldehyde. Glutathaldehyde is very similar to Seachem XL for example. Now maybe just maybe I could have gotten rid of it faster if I would have produced the light even more. But in this tank I really wanted to have a nice clean carpet with the Glossostigma and for Glossostigma you need to have quite a lot of light. So it was either you know sacrificing plant health or having some algae so it's it was just hard to find the right balance. But yeah that's enough about the algae let's talk about the layout itself. So even though the tank is not 100% perfect this is actually currently my favorite tank in my entire studio. I just really love this specific style of aquascaping. Now if I have to give this style a name I would call it classic ADA style nature aquarium. Yeah I think that sounds good. Actually this entire layout is inspired by this nature aquarium guide on ADA which is just kind of like a quick start guide to aquascaping with of course all the ADA products. I haven't used any ADA products in here I think. No nothing. But I've just used the kind of the layout as a yeah as a guide for for this one just as inspiration basically. Now just because I'm calling this classic ADA style nature aquarium doesn't mean that I'm at some sort of the same level as the ADA creators actually far from it. Most of you guys will know that I've been to Japan last year. I've been inside the ADA gallery and the level of aquascaping there is is out of this world. I'm not even close to that so I'm just calling it classic ADA style because it just reminds me of yeah their layouts. And I've just used ADA guide as inspiration. Yeah I still have a long way to go if I want to reach their level. But I kind of just wanted to share that with you guys. I'm really enjoying this layout even though it does have a little bit of algae. I hope you guys enjoyed it as well. For now this is it. Thanks for watching. See you in the next one.